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Thrall : poems / Natasha Trethewey.

by Trethewey, Natasha D., 1966-

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Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.

American poetry -- 21st century.

Miracle of the black leg -- On captivity -- Taxonomy -- De Español y de India Produce Mestiso -- De Español y Negra Produce Mulato -- De Español y Mestiza Produce Castiza -- The Book of Castas -- Kitchen Maid with Supper at Emmaus; or, The Mulata -- Knowledge -- The Americans -- Dr. Samuel Adolphus Cartwright on Dissecting the White Negro, 1851 -- Blood -- Help, 1968 -- Mano Prieta -- De Español y Negra; Mulata -- Mythology -- Nostos -- Questions Posed by the Dream -- Siren -- Geography -- Torna Atrás -- Bird in the House -- Artifact -- Fouled -- Rotation -- Thrall -- Calling -- Enlightenment -- How the Past Comes Back -- On Happiness -- Vespertina Cognitio -- Illumination.

By unflinchingly charting the intersections of public and personal history, Thrall explores the historical, cultural, and social forces-across time and space-that determine the roles consigned to a mixed-race daughter and her white father. In a vivid series of poems about interracial marriage depicted in the Casta Paintings of Colonial Mexico, Trethewey investigates the philosophical assumptions that underpin Enlightenment notions of taxonomy and classification, exposing the way they encode ideas of race within our collective imagination. While tropes about captivity, bondage, inheritance, and enthrallment permeate the collection, Trethewey, by reflecting on a series of small estrangements from her poet father, comes to an understanding of how, as father and daughter, they are part of the ongoing history of race in America.

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